Blogging for Business: How to Build an Awesome Blog

The world of marketing and advertising is changing. Technology is making it easier to promote a product from the ease and comfort of your own home, and more companies are utilizing the internet and blogging for their business as a means of advertising. With this comes the change in consumerism as well. Customers don’t just want to buy the product anymore, they want to buy the entire experience the product has to offer. People don’t just want to buy coffee, they want to buy the whole coffee house experience: the aroma, the comfortable chair, a good book open in their laps and the familiar mug of smooth coffee by their side.

The MLM industry is no different. People don’t just want to join a company because of the thrill of the sale, they want to enter into MLM because of the lifestyle it affords and the experience of being your own boss. Your potential customer base wants to know how your product can change their lives for the better. In order to sell the experience of your product or the company, you need more than just a sales pitch; you need a place where people can go to really learn what your product has to offer and how it will increase comfort level of their everyday lives. A blog is a great medium for promoting your product in a more in-depth fashion; it’s where you can sell the whole experience of your product in a meaningful, insightful manner. Blogging for business can help grow your company.

How to Blog for Your Business

Because blogging allows you to take on a more comprehensive and inclusive approach to marketing your product, it can be a bit daunting to think of relevant and useful content that will not only attract readers but also maintain a solid base of returning visitors. Whether you’re just getting started with your site or you’re a seasoned blogger, follow this advice on blogging for business in order to maintain a quality web page and grow a useful online community.

Blog Content: Quality, Not Quantity

Remember that your blog can have a huge impact on the public image of your company, so you want to make sure to always include high quality, professional content. A common mistake that bloggers make when marketing a product is to put as much content they can pump out onto their site, and the result is an exuberant amount of low quality articles that eventually get buried among all the others. This is what I like to call the “trash pile”. Instead of building your trash pile, why not spend your time writing a few really good articles that will continue to attract readers, and spend the additional time promoting this stellar content? Afterall, you worked hard on it, so why not promote the heck out of it?

If you want to know how much time you should spend on writing new content and how much on promoting your existing content, use Derek Halpern’s of Social Triggers great advice with his 80/20 rule. A good rule of thumb is to spend 20% of your time writing useful content, and the other 80% promoting that content. If you spend your time writing outstanding, relevant content, you’ll increase your credibility among your readership and they’ll come to expect greatness out of you and your products.

Solve a Problem, Answer a Question

Always remember that your blog is not anonymous and that you’re content represents the face of the company. It’s not an online journal or diary, and it would be difficult to attract or maintain readership by posting about your daily activities and keeping the focus mainly on yourself. Readers ultimately want to know how your content can be useful to them, so strive to write useful articles.

For instance, if you sell t-shirts, a reader stumbles upon your blog because they’re looking to buy what you sell. But you don’t want them to just buy one shirt, you want them to become a returning shopper who spreads the word about your company to their friends or their social media community. How do you this? Give them something to come back for. Don’t write about how you make and sell t-shirts and every aspect that goes into what you do to promote your business. Instead offer some great styling tips or fashion advice, something that the reader can find relevant for their own lives. In Derek Halpern’s words, “you need to write content that solves a problem in your ideal customer’s life…and they’ll seek you out”.

Widen Your Target Audience (Slightly)

When you’re stuck trying to think of what to write for your blog, one idea is to think of your ideal customer and then take one step back. If you sell clothes for infants, your ideal customers are new parents or parents-to-be who are in the market for cute, unique baby clothes. You’ve spent all your time trying to market to this audience and you’re focused on why they should buy your clothes over the competition’s. Now take one step back. What if you could attract new parents to your site who may not even be aware they’re in the market for cute, unique baby clothes? Write content about being a new parent, like how to throw a fun first birthday party or tea party for girls and their dolls, or how to coordinate colors for a baby’s first photo shoot. You’ll increase traffic to your blog and attract people who just can’t resist your awesome product.

But do keep in mind that you want to attract those who are likely to buy, so don’t widen your audience so much that you’re including non-relevant articles for a person who wouldn’t buy your product.

Better Blogging for Better Business

In the network marketing industry, sometimes your blog and your online community is your main contact between you and your customer base or your prospects. You not only want to attract readers, you want to maintain a solid readership of potential customers. Your blog is a looking glass into your company. It’s where people can see through and determine if your content is worthy of their readership, or if your product is of interest to them or someone they know. Keep your blog content relevant and professional and once you’ve written terrific articles, spend time on promoting them too. Blogging for business is a great way to spread your message and reach out to your online community.

J. Audrey Hoy is the CatalystMLM team’s resident wordsmith. With a master’s of fine arts degree from New York University, J. Audrey has served as an Adjunct Instructor of Creative Writing at NYU and she currently works as the Content Editor and contributor at CatalystMLM. Originally hailing from the Chicagoland area, J. Audrey has previously resided in Iowa City, Brooklyn and currently lives in Burlington, Vermont. She spends her free time reading novels, writing, exploring the Burlington area and enjoying the outdoors.